First big fencing job was on the Laureles

Before barbed wire — what cowboys called Texas silk — Mifflin Kenedy built a 36-mile fence of pine boards and cypress posts. Kenedy's fence stretched across a peninsula, from the Oso to Laureles Creek, which closed the Laureles Ranch in 1868.

Capt. Andrew Anderson recalled that when the fence was being built, he hauled "a million feet of lumber" to the Laureles aboard the schooner Flour Bluff. Isom H. Thomas, caporal of Laureles, said Kenedy took a lively interest as the fence went up. "He would look down a long line and if he saw the slightest deviation from a straight line, the kink had to be straightened out before he would pass it."

A year later, Kenedy's friend and former partner Richard King began to fence King Ranch. Like Kenedy, he used planks and cypress posts treated with creosote. Within three years, by 1874, King had 70,000 acres fenced. The Coleman, Mathis and Fulton Pasture Co. began fencing in 1871. One fence was north of Fulton and one stretched from Puerto Bay to Corpus Christi Bay.

Another early fencer was S.G. Miller, who put up a 15-mile mesquite fence on his ranch where Lake Corpus Christi is today. This fence was made of mesquite posts set vertical against each other. The fence angered Miller's neighbors because it blocked a road between Corpus Christi and Gussettville. Mrs. Miller in "Sixty Years in the Nueces Valley" said the fence "caused a great deal of trouble with all the residents from Gussettville to Corpus Christi. Nearly every day we would find the fence cut some place. As the old road ran through the place (their ranch), travelers did not hesitate to tear down this fence and leave it down for yards instead of going a little out of the way to the gate." Miller finally got fed up and had a deep trench dug just on the inside of the fence. One dark night, several wagons ended up in the ditch and Mrs. Miller said "such cursing and swearing you never heard, but that was the end of the trouble." This was a preview of fights to come, especially when fences closed off what had been seen as a public right-of-way.

After a bad drought and severe winter in 1873, ranchers in South Texas lost thousands of head of cattle. They starved and froze to death, helped along by their weakened condition. Mifflin Kenedy, with his grass protected on the fenced-in Laureles, didn't lose a single head. Other cattlemen took notice.

The following year, patents for barbed wire and a machine for making it were granted to Joseph Farwell Glidden of De Kalb, Ill. Barbed-wire fences soon stretched across the land.

But not in South Texas. Ranchers distrusted anything from the North; barbed wire had another strike against it, being invented by an Illinois farmer. They also feared the "thorny wire" would wound cattle and give entry to the deadly screw worm. So barbed wire was slow to catch on in South Texas.

Two years after barbed-wire came on the market, Martha Rabb, the "cattle queen of Texas," enclosed her Banquete ranch — sometimes called "Rancho Flecha" for the Bow-and-Arrow brand — with a plank fence made of pine boards nailed to cypress posts. The fence was 40 miles long and took a fence-rider two days to ride it.

While barbed wire was slow to catch on, it did catch on. An event that helped it gain acceptance was staged in San Antonio in 1878. One of Glidden's traveling salesmen — John Warne "Bet-a-Million" Gates — talked city officials into letting him put up a demonstration barbed-wire corral in Military Plaza. When it was up, he had longhorns driven into the enclosure. As cattlemen watched, the longhorns shied away from the sharp barbs. Even when two men entered with flaming torches, the cattle refused to get too close to the thorny wire.

Many who saw the demonstration became enthusiasts of Glidden's wire. Once ranchers had their own barbed-wire fences, they discovered that cattle and horses learned to avoid it. After cattle had a brush with the wire, it was said, you couldn't drive them between two posts.

"Bet-a-Million" Gates couldn't begin to fill the orders for wire that was "light as air, stronger than whisky, and cheap as dirt." New fence lines of barbed-wire angled their way across Texas. Walter Prescott Webb wrote in "The Great Plains" — "Barbed wire was cheap to buy and easy to erect. It did not obstruct view nor did it waste any ground. It stopped and held livestock without danger."

There were still some holdouts. Mifflin Kenedy sold his Laureles Ranch to a Scottish syndicate in 1882 (investors in Britain were buying ranches across the West). Kenedy then bought La Parra — "Grapevine" — in the Big Sands. He had fenced Laureles in 1868 with expensive Florida heart-of-pine planks. This time at La Parra, he used cypress posts and five strands of galvanized round wire. A fence of 60 miles enclosed roughly 400,000 acres. Nearby Armstrong Ranch followed suit when a fence was built to separate Armstrong and Kenedy lands. The ranch used cypress posts with smooth wire. A book on the Armstrong Ranch says there were turning devices at half-mile intervals to tighten the wire.

Another legendary South Texas rancher, Abel Head ‘Shanghai' Pierce, distrusted barbed wire. "Old Shang" was afraid his coastal cattle — cowboys called them "sea lions" — would cut themselves on the barbs and die of screw worms.